Kristian Westergaard is a Danish composer living in Norway. His wide-ranging background in experimental jazz, punk rock, singer-songwriter makes him a fluent and prolific improviser.

Although Westergaard holds a soloist's degree in guitar from The Royal Conservatory of Jutland in Denmark, and has spanned more genres than most, the recent years have seen him focusing more and more on a particular instrument - namely the Buchla Music Easel, a unique-sounding modular synthesizer. Reminiscent of brass or even strings, it is however impossible to pigeon-hole, since it is completely its own.

Determined to build a spacious, cinematic, and enigmatic flood of sound, Westergaard invites you on an improvised journey ranging from fragile and simply beautiful, to violent, dissonant and noisy - and everything in between. This is music to lose yourself in for a while.

Never trying to show off or convince the listener in any way, it takes you through breathtaking scenery one step at a time, revealing the path bit by bit.

Westergaard's music is constantly searching and evolving but with great sense of direction, with a physicality only possible to achieve with a sensitive instrument and a sensitive player.

It often feels like going somewhere you've never been before, but with a feeling of home right away.

Quotes:

“Few things in life are black or white. Reality takes place within a wide range of greys. Kristian Westergaard’s new work, entitled “Grey”, feels like an aesthetic manifesto by an artist not constrained by the confines of a compositional style. Westergaard's background in experimental jazz and other boundary pushing directions has equipped him with a rich tool box of eclectic assets at his disposal. In “Grey”, Westergaard delivers an elegant mix of these goodies through the medium of a modular synthesizer that has served him as his unique voice in recent years. On first impressions, this album comes across as chillaxing electronica in comparison with the work of his peers in the experimental spectrum. However, this would be a far from a valid judgement. On closer inspection, “Grey” is a coherent and highly accomplished work built within a robust multi layered framework. “Grey” allows itself to bend with the wind and ends up all the richer for it.